View of the Old Capitol - Tallahassee, Florida
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The Florida State Capitol is located in Tallahassee, Florida. The first capitol was originally built in 1826, but it was never completed. This building was built in 1845 and was at risk of being demolished in the late 1970s after the new Capitol building was built. It was saved thanks to citizens' actions. The "Old Capitol" building was kept and restored to house the Governor's suite, Supreme Court, House of Representatives and Senate chambers. It also houses the Florida Historic Capitol Museum that displays the political history of the state of Florida. After the addition of the new building, the building is considered the third largest Capitol building in the United States.<br /><br />For further exploration, please visit <a href="https://www.floridacapitol.myflorida.com/">https://www.floridacapitol.myflorida.com/</a>
Beatrice M. Queral
Wikimedia
Florida Capitol: My Florida
1845 originally; 2008 for new building
Beatrice M. Queral
Florida Capitol: My Florida
Florida Capitol: My Florida
Medium: Photograph
English
Public Architecture
Architecture
Tallahassee, Florida
View of Arch "A" - Oberlin, Ohio
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Photograph of the Oberlin College (View of the Arch) <br /><br />"Both the college and the town of Oberlin were founded in 1833 by a pair of Presbyterian ministers...Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating conservatory in the country...It is also the oldest continuously operating coeducational institution, since having admitted four women in 1837."
R.W. Johnston Studios
NY Times
Library of Congress
c 1909
R.W. Johnston Studios
Library of Congress
Link: <a href="http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/pnp/pan/6a08000/6a08500/6a08562r.jpg">Library of Congress</a>
Medium: Photograph
English
Public Architecture
Architecture
Ohio
U.S. Post Office & Courthouse
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The U.S. Post Office and Courthouse in Charleston, South Carolina, is located on the southwest corner of Meeting and Broad Streets in an area known as the "Four Corners of Law." The building is a testament to the importance of the federal presence in the city. On the northwest corner, a 1792 courthouse represents the role of county government in Charleston. City Hall, built in 1802 on the northeast corner, symbolizes the presence of municipal government. Finally, St. Michael's Episcopal Church, built between 1752 and 1761, signifies divine law as a component in community life. The building was individually listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, and is also within the boundaries of the National Register Charleston Historic District and the National Historic Landmark Charleston Historic District. Today, the building continues to function as a post office and courthouse.<br /><br />For further exploration, please see <a href="https://www.gsa.gov/historic-buildings/us-post-office-and-courthouse-charleston-sc">https://www.gsa.gov/historic-buildings/us-post-office-and-courthouse-charleston-sc</a>
National Archives
Wikimedia
U.S. Postal Service & Courthouse
1901
National Archives
U.S. Postal Service & Courthouse
Link: <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Post_Office_and_Courthouse_(Charleston,_South_Carolina)_1901.jpg">U.S. Postal Service & Courthouse </a>
Medium: Photograph
English
Public Architecture
Architecture
Charleston, South Carolina
U.S. Patent Office
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The United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO or USPTO) is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.<br /><br />For further exploration, please see <a href="https://www.uspto.gov/">https://www.uspto.gov/</a>
Edward Sachse & Co.
Wikimedia
U.S. Patent Office
1836
Edward Sachse & Co.
U.S. Patent Office
Link: <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Patent_Office.jpg"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">U.S. Patent Office</span></a>
Medium: Photograph
English
Public Architecture
Architecture
Washington D.C.
Thomas Jefferson Memorial, Washington D.C.
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The Thomas Jefferson Memorial is a presidential memorial in Washington, D.C. dedicated to Thomas Jefferson, an American Founding Father and the 3rd president of the United States. This neoclassical building was designed by John Russell Pope. It was built by Philadelphia contractor John McShain. Construction began in 1939, the building was completed in 1943, and the bronze statue of Jefferson was added in 1947.
Rudulph Evans: Statue;
John Russell Pope: Memorial
Wikimedia & Britannica
US Library of Congress
Statute and Memorial: 1943. Photograph taken in 1983.
Rudolph Evans & John Russell Pope
US Library of Congress
<a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/00653058/">Source: United States Library of Congress</a>
Medium: Sculpture & Photograph
English
Public Architecture
Architecture
Washington D.C.
The White House, 1846
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This image represents the earliest known photograph of the White House. It was taken by entrepreneurial photographer and gallerist John Plumbe in 1846, during the administration of James K. Polk<br /><br />For further exploration, please see <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/the-white-house/">https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/the-white-house/</a>
John Plumbe
Wikimedia
The White House
1846
John Plumbe
The White House
Link: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:White_House_1846.jpg"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">The White House, 1846 (via Wikipedia)</span></a>
Medium: Photograph
English
Public Architecture
Architecture
Washington D.C.
The Three Soldiers, Vietnam Veterans War Memorial, Washington, D.C.
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This heroic bronze statue entitled The Three Soldiers is one of the most visited monuments in Washington, D.C. It is situated in the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial and was dedicated by President Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Statue: Frederick Hart
Microsoft Virtual Earth & Tripadvisor
US Library of Congress
Statue: 1984.
Frederick Hart
US Library of Congress
<a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2010630680/">Source: The United States Library of Congress</a>
Medium: Photograph & Statue
English
Public Architecture
Architecture
Washington D.C.
The Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C.
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">The Lincoln Memorial was one outcome of the 1901 Senate Park Commission, which sought to reimagine Washington D.C.’s National Mall as a grand display of neoclassical architecture. Through taking classical European architectural themes (white marble, open-air porticos, and pillars) as their prototype, these designers and architects were attempting to evoke an idealistic image of ancient Grecian social and political norms. Abraham Lincoln was seen by many in the early 20th century to be the quintessential American embodiment of these principles. “As early as the 1880s, memories of the terrible Civil War had begun to shed their goriness and particularly to assume the form of a national epic,” and within this epic, there was no hero larger than Lincoln. As such, the members of the Senate Park Commission drafted a series of potential memorials to the 16th U.S. President in the first decade of the 20th century. It was not though until 1911, when a sufficient amount of bipartisan agreement was attained, that the plan was able to take off in earnest. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Under President William Howard Taft, a Lincoln Memorial Commission was established, and it swiftly commissioned architect Henry Bacon to head the project. Born in 1866, Bacon was already well known for his Greek Revivalist style, demonstrated by his work on the 1889 Paris World Expo, the Boston Public Library, New York’s Pennsylvania Station, and so on. Taking the ancient Athenian Parthenon as his main inspiration, Bacon drafted a “temple-like hall,” closed by thirty-eight Doric columns, within which a large statue of Lincoln and engravings of both his Gettysburg Address and second inaugural address would be held. The marble for the monument was transported all the way from Colorado’s stone quarries and, once this difficult process had commenced, building was able to begin in the spring of 1914. When the dust settled on the construction site in 1918, the price of the project rang in at over $2,000,000. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Immediately, the site became an enduring testament to the large role an individual devoted to the common good and public service can achieve. However, at the same time, it became clear that Lincoln’s memorialization could not ensure that all of his ideals would too be cast in stone. Despite the steps Lincoln took toward American racial equality throughout the Civil War period, President Harding took the memorial’s dedication ceremony as a chance to eerily assert that “the supreme chapter in American history is [union,] not emancipation” (the granting of previously enslaved African Americans full and equal citizenship rights). </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Unsurprisingly then, the twentieth century would see the memorial become a vivid site of political contestation. Civil rights activists in the late 1930s, relying on Lincoln’s generally-accepted status as a promoter of democratic ideals and liberal equality, began to imagine the memorial as a fitting space within which to amplify the continued fight for racial and economic justice. In 1939 the memorial, for the first time, became the center of a mass civil rights demonstration after the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to book the African-American opera singer Marian Anderson for a performance at Constitution Hall in Washington. Organizations like the NAACP saw incidents like this one as means to expose the significant “dissonance between the ideals Lincoln represented...and the reality of their lived experience,” as the abuses of American segregation continued.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">By the 1960s, these tensions were still glaringly apparent. As Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I have a Dream” speech from the steps of the memorial in August of 1963, these words from Lincoln’s second inaugural address stood, engraved, above him: “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.” However, as Dr. King revealed, the forms of slavery that Lincoln had worked to do away with, had simply been transformed in the context of Jim Crow segregation, not eradicated. “One hundred years later,” he explains “the life of the Negro is still sadly cripped by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” Nearly sixty years after Dr. King’s speech, protestors have again taken to the site to express continued inequality in the United States in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">A key tenant of public service is to render the public sphere more equitable and </span><span style="font-weight:400;">accessible to </span><i><span style="font-weight:400;">all</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;">. Lincoln’s legacy, embodied in the Lincoln Memorial, allows us to consider and to debate over the ways in which various public servants have historically contributed to this project, while also reminding us that there is always more work to be done. <br /><br /><br /><strong>Sources:</strong><br /></span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Thomas, Christopher A. "The Marble of the Lincoln Memorial: "Whitest, Prettiest, and ... Best"." </span><i><span style="font-weight:400;">Washington History</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;"> 5, no. 2 (1993): 42-63. Accessed February 5, 2021. </span><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/40073208"><span style="font-weight:400;">http://www.jstor.org/stable/40073208</span></a><span style="font-weight:400;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Schwartz, Barry. "Collective Memory and History: How Abraham Lincoln Became a Symbol of Racial Equality." </span><i><span style="font-weight:400;">The Sociological Quarterly</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;"> 38, no. 3 (1997): 469-96. Accessed February 5, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4121155.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Sandage, Scott A. “A Marble House Divided: The Lincoln Memorial, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Politics of Memory, 1939-1963.” The Journal of American History, vol. 80, no. 1, 1993, pp. 135–167. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2079700. Accessed 5 Feb. 2021.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Eberly, Keith R. ""To Thee We Sing": Racial Politics and the Lincoln Memorial." </span><i><span style="font-weight:400;">OAH Magazine of History</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;"> 23, no. 1 (2009): 55-58. Accessed February 5, 2021. http://www.jstor.org.oca.ucsc.edu/stable/25164895.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">“‘I Have A Dream’ Speech, In Its Entirety.” NPR, January 18, 2010, </span><a href="https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety"><span style="font-weight:400;">https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety</span></a><span style="font-weight:400;">. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight:400;">Nichols, Mackenzie. “Protestors Gather on Lincoln Memorial Steps to Support Black Lives Matter.” Variety Magazine, June 6th, 2020, </span><a href="https://variety.com/2020/scene/news/lincoln-memorial-protest-black-lives-matter-george-floyd-1234626998/"><span style="font-weight:400;">https://variety.com/2020/scene/news/lincoln-memorial-protest-black-lives-matter-george-floyd-1234626998/</span></a><span style="font-weight:400;">. </span></p>
<p></p>
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<strong>Further Reading:</strong><br /><i><span style="font-weight:400;"><br />Lincoln Memorial: The Story and Design of an American Monument</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;"><span style="font-weight:400;"> by Jay Sacher<br /></span></span><br /><i><span style="font-weight:400;">The Lincoln Memorial and American</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;"> Life by Christopher Thomas<br /></span><br /><i><span style="font-weight:400;">Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory </span></i><span style="font-weight:400;">by Barry Schwartz</span><br /><i><span style="font-weight:400;">Lincoln and the Radicals</span></i><span style="font-weight:400;"> by T. Harry Williams</span><br /><p><span style="font-weight:400;"></span></p>
Henry Bacon (Architect) & Daniel Chester French (Sculptor)
Wikimedia
Lincoln Statue Unveiling: 1920.
Memorial Construction: 1914-1918. Photograph taken in 1923.
Source: <span style="text-decoration:underline;"><a href="http://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/lincoln-memorial-design-individuals.htm"><strong>National Parks Service</strong></a></span>
The Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library
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The Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library is the main library building at Vassar College, in Poughkeepsie, New York.
The Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library at Vassar College was designed by architects Allen and Collen and it represents a wonderful example of their Gothic Revival design work.
Vassar College
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/56/Thompson_Library_%28Vassar_College%29.jpg/1280px-Thompson_Library_%28Vassar_College%29.jpg
Vassar College
2007
Vassar College
Source: Allen & Collens. (2012, June 30). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:02, October 12, 2012, from <a href="http://bit.ly/SV6rx4">http://bit.ly/SV6rx4</a>.
For Further Exploration Please Visit <a href="http://library.vassar.edu/">http://library.vassar.edu/</a>
Medium: Photograph
English
Library
Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library, Vassar College, NY, Gothic Revival, Public Architecture, Architecture
New York
Texas Capitol from the South Ground
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The Texas Capitol is recognized as one of the most distinguished state capitols in the country. It's an excellent example of a late 19th century public architecture. The capitol was completed in 1888. In 1986, it was designated a National Historic Landmark for its contribution to American history.<br /><br />For further exploraiton, please visit <a href="https://tspb.texas.gov/prop/tcg/tcg/grounds.html">https://tspb.texas.gov/prop/tcg/tcg/grounds.html</a>
Elijah E. Myers
Visit Austin
Texas Legislature
1888
Elijah E. Meyers
Texas Legislature
Link: <a href="http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/images/backgrounds/capitolc_1024.jpg">Texas Legislature</a>
Medium: Photograph
English
Public Architecture
Architecture
Austin, Texas